Dear America: It’s Been a Great Run
Honestly, my friends, it feels like we are in the seventeenth year of this horrible, un-American presidency. I thought that it was going to be Mama DOCTOR Jill pulling Joe Biden’s puppet strings at first but the Big Green lobby got there first and knocked her and her teachers’ union out of the way.
I have worried for a very long time that our beloved Republic was in serious decline. I am not the youngest of men, but I still thought that it might not completely disintegrate during my lifetime.
My bad.
There’s a thought experiment I’ve had playing out in my head ever since last year when I got the nagging feeling that the stupid Wuhan Chinese Bat Flu was going to derail Trump’s chances for a second term. I began wondering whether I might want to just duck out for a while and try the expatriate lifestyle on for size.
I’ve had the good fortune to travel all around the world telling jokes. Most of the places I’ve seen where I would want to live are beaches in the South Pacific that would require security clearances that the Beltway Gang isn’t going to give me. Sure, they’ll let me in for a day or two to entertain the troops and contractors and maybe snorkel a little, but they aren’t going to let me hang around.
So I’ve been pining away for my main ancestral homelands — Poland, Ireland and sort of Norway — as I dream of a grand relocation.
These have all been bucket-list travel destinations for me for a long time. Despite my professional globetrotting ways, I’ve not traveled much in Europe and have never been to any of the aforementioned countries. In fact, I’ve only been to Europe once and that was to visit my sister when she and her husband and kids lived there. As fate would have it, I got a horrible sinus infection while I was there. To me, England mostly looks like the inside of my sister’s old guest bedroom.
One other place that’s on my current list is one I’ve actually been to, albeit very briefly. I had been thinking about heading down to Ensenada, Mexico, for six months or so to do a work/fishing-on-the-beach thing anyway. The only time I’ve been there was when I was doing a cruise ship gig and the company flew me to San Diego, then had some kid from Mexico pick me up and drive me to Ensenada so I could get on the ship and do my shows for the weekend.
It seemed nice enough.
Also, did I mention the fishing?
I should mention that this expatriation dream remains largely that. If the United States of America is really in its death rattle and soon to slip into global village irrelevance then I know that the rest of the world is screwed. One of the first things that Biden’s idiot former boss The Lighbringer did was make Poland less safe by — and this too rich — sucking up to Russia and scrapping plans for the U.S. to build a missile defense shield there.
Still, when you’re in your second year of sitting at home, merely dreaming about travel can be the thing that keeps you off of heroin.
Poland has a legitimate path to citizenship for me too. The president there has unilateral power to grant citizenship to anyone of Polish descent if he sees fit to do so.
I’ve been in contact with the consulate — which is just down the street from where I used to live in Los Angeles — and I’m sending the president some chocolates.
I’m going to have to fire up the Duolingo for a few of these places, but here they are in the particular order that I am considering them.
1. Kraków, Poland
View this post on Instagram
2. Dublin, Ireland
View this post on Instagram
3. Lofoten Islands, Norway
View this post on Instagram
4. Ensenada, Mexico
View this post on Instagram
This is just my happy place mental wandering list that helps me occasionally forget the overwhelming Biden-ness of the American experience at present. Don’t harsh my mellow with real-world pedantry. I mentioned something on Twitter the other day and someone started blah, blah, blahing about taxes in each place.
Don’t be that person. Appreciate the mental exercise for what it is and perhaps share some of your bucket lists with me.
Let’s do this.
___
Kruiser on Parler
Kruiser on MeWe
Kruiser on Twitter
Kruiser on Facebook
PJ Media Senior Columnist and Associate Editor Stephen Kruiser is the author of “Don’t Let the Hippies Shower” and “Straight Outta Feelings: Political Zen in the Age of Outrage,” both of which address serious subjects in a humorous way. Monday through Friday he edits PJ Media’s “Morning Briefing.” His columns appear twice a week.
